iraqi women journalist’s forum (iwjf) condemns slander campaigns against media women and demands finding legal texts that sue the people who use the social media sites badly

Baghdad:IWJF

 While social media became an important tool, it remains at the same time carrying or promoting sources to threaten individuals, society or even the state when this tool get used badly, many colleagues in media field were subjected to slander campaigns and reputation damage, that all requires from us to review all these issues and find proper solutions.

The most recent of them, was the cruel and immoral attack against our colleague Jeehan Al-Taie through social media sites with publications and accusations to her and her family, we condemn and deny these accusations for their social and psychological impact, these attacks are a bold and shameless breach for the universal declaration of human rights and for the international covenant of civil and political rights and for the freedoms confirmed and protected by the iraqi constitution.

Although the amended Iraqi penal code No.111 of 1969 and in provisions of articles 361,362,363, showed two types of acts in terms of the place of their occurrence, the first type is related to attacks on telecommunication means, and the second one is related to individuals abuse through bad use of these means. However, the existing legislation and provisions in the law do not live up to the progress and development achieved recently by telecommunication sector, which leads us to demand the concerned authorities to make a qualitative leap in legal texts dealing with these matters with the cooperation of all competent authorities, because of the indecent utilization of this IT revolution.

We also call on government authorities to develop preventive media strategy to raise awareness among society members about the risk of spreading rumors through social media, where many individuals spread different topics through social society without checking the validity and the negative impact of these topics, which may cause chaos or may help achieve goals of the group who posted this content for the first time.

Iraqi Media Journalist’s Forum

Sawtuha Network for human rights defenders.

 21/1/2018